Conversation - a practical response to conflict

The unique ambience of St Ethelburga’s can provide a powerful private space in which people divided by conflicting beliefs can establish more fruitful forms of conversation. We offer a chance for adversaries to meet as people and to know one another in greater complexity than is possible when they meet as adversaries and speak from polarized positions.

We call this simply “conversation” — a process of questioning and listening designed to invite the participants into a deeper understanding of each other. We know from experience that changing the nature of the conversation fundamentally changes the relationships of those involved.

We use a well-tried approach, pioneered in the US by the Public Conversations Project from whom we receive training and support. The process is simple, transparent and powerful. It relies on careful preparation and even-handedness. We invite all participants from both sides to help define some mutually acceptable goals for a conversation. Skilled facilitators then seek everyone’s agreement to a structure for the dialogue that will enable safe and honest reflection and exchange. The facilitators support the dialogue itself, which typically may involve one or more 3 hour sessions.

Unlike mediation and arbitration, this kind of conversation is not concerned with reaching any kind of agreement or solution. Rather, it offers the possibility for participants to move safely away from fixed positions and negative assumptions about their opponents, and experiment with new ways of listening to and talking with them as complex, multi-dimensional human beings. It opens up the possibility of greater understanding and respect between people who may see the world in quite different ways.